The Okeanos Explorer has been to Indonesia and many other locales, such as the Galapagos and the deeps off the Caymans, but is currently operating off the east coast of North America, surveying and studying a series of deep-sea canyons and seamounts as seen here. Those on the legs I've seen (2nd leg?) are in white arrows...

What's even more fantastic? Many deep-sea biologists, some world experts in the field, are actually listening in via phone, or via internet forums. I'm one of the world's experts on starfish and I'm monitoring via Twitter (@echinoblog) and via conference call.

Each day of the expedition can go anywhere from 5 to 7 hours. So there's a LOT of footage. So here.. I present some of the highlights of new discoveries and neat, weird deep-sea animals from the last few days of video footage.

There's still more to come and undoubtedly, I've undoubtedly missed some but this gives you a nice overview of new discoveries and awesome stuff from the 1000+ meter deeps off the east coast of North America!

These animals are heavily studied and are important to ecologists as well as physiologists and even scientists researching astrobiology (those that explore how life on other planets originated in extreme habitats)

Cold Seep habitats are unusual and when found, they are often monitored by the scientific community for study because of their potential importance.

Parasites? Commensals Part of the animal? A new species? MANY questions!

Sea Spiders aka Pycnogonids crawl on deep-sea corals and other cnidarins
Here's one on a sea pen

Another crawling on some deep-sea coral

Weird & Rarely Seen Deep-sea starfish species!
This starfish, called Pythonaster, is known from fewer than 6 specimens in the entire world. This is the 2nd time this animal has been observed alive and the FIRST time it has been observed alive in the Atlantic.

Here is a plate of this animal from the HMS Challenger Expedition, which described it in 1889!!

This starfish, Neomorphaster, is better known to scientists, but seeing it alive like this? That's not something that happens often.

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About Me

I pursue starfish related adventure around the world with a critical eye and an appreciation for weirdness.
Support has been courtesy of the National Science Foundation but the views and opinions presented herein are mine and do not reflect the opinions of them or any affiliated institutions.
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